Reselling VoIP

February 13, 2005

I’ve known Citel’s Mike Robinson for a while and he has never been so enthused as the most recent chat I had with him about Citel’s future after the MCK acquisition. MCK was a very strong company in the 1999-2000 era. They sold remote access solutions and were well-respected in the industry. During the “crash,” they fell off the face of the earth it seemed. I didn’t hear from them so I assumed the worst. One of the key benefits to Citel in acquiring MCK is the breadth of legacy protocol experience both companies have together -- One on the remote access side and the other in the handset gateway arena.

In our conversation, Mike was especially happy to tell me about the VoIP opportunities for resellers... When coupled with a hosted solution, you can use Citel’s handset gateways to go into a customer site and tell them they will get more features, better service and a lower phone bill when they switch to VoIP. They’ll get features like simultaneous ring, CTI, web-based administration, find-me, follow-me, etc.

In his opinion, IP PBX sales are predicated on PBXs breaking whereas this sale is predicated on nothing. You go in and tell customers they will save money and get more. They can’t say no.

For reasons such as the above, we are seeing a massive surge in reseller attendance at our upcoming Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week. Resellers are a smart bunch and follow the money. I’m actually involved in a panel on How to Make Money Selling VoIP. I asked Mike Robinson to present in this session as well. Hope to see you there.

Reselling VoIP

Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

Reselling VoIP